In prior U.S. Pat. Nos., Re 24,765, 3,037,893 and 3,094,376, I disclose the use of low friction Teflon (trademark for polytetrafluoroethylene) filaments woven with bondable filaments into a cloth which was then adhered to a structural bearing element to provide a low friction surface thereon. Bonding of Teflon is difficult and the use of a cloth containing Teflon filaments and bondable filaments overcame this difficulty. Drawbacks in the use of such cloth include the expense of cutting and shaping it to the surface of a structural bearing element, particularly spherical curved surfaces; difficulty in impregnating the cloth with the bonding resin; uncertainty as to the complete cure of the resin; difficulty of obtaining any mechanical interlock between the cloth fibers and the surface of the structural bearing element other than that provided by the resin itself. As a consequence there was a need for a new approach to applying low friction filaments to structural bearing members which revealed a better low friction bearing and which will lend itself to high production bearing manufacture.
Anti-friction bearings are also described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,958,297.